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Pratchett, Terry: (27) The Last Hero

What an odd damn holiday. It was the sort of thing the phrase “mixed bag” was invented to describe, or to put it another way, it was rather like the little girl: when it was good, it was very good, but when it was bad, it was awful. Which, for these purposes, boils down to: I didn’t have much time to read. (I also didn’t have net access, so this is going to be a long entry [ed.: split up for import into MT].)

I did read one of my Christmas presents, Terry Pratchett’s The Last Hero, beautifully and richly illustrated by Paul Kidby (not to be confused with Josh Kirby, the recently-deceased artist who did many of the UK Discworld covers). This is a much better story than the other recent Discworld book, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, though I don’t think it’s because this one actually is about the end of the world (again). This time, the end is nigh because Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde (a handful of very old, and therefore very skilled, heroes, last seen conquering the Agatean Empire), have decided that it’s time to return fire to the gods—with interest.

A mix of familiar characters from Ankh-Morpork are drafted to stop him, leading to such conversations as this one:

‘What is that on your badge, Captain Carrot?’

‘Mission motto, sir,’ said Carrot cheerfully. ‘Morituri Nolumus Mori. Rincewind suggested it.’

‘I imagine he did,’ said Lord Vetinari, observing the wizard coldly. ‘And would you care to give us a colloquial translation, Mr Rincewind?’

‘Err . . . ‘ Rincewind hestitated, but there really was no escape. ‘Er . . . roughly speaking, it means, “We who are about to die don’t want to,” sir.’

There are moving bits among the silliness, and a nice clean plot, too. The book is fairly short—160 lavishly-illustrated, coffee-table-sized pages—but just the right length for the story. What’s more, the detailed illustrations add another layer, one that could not adquately be conveyed by text alone; just the picture of Death with the kitten (link to postcard page [*]) is priceless, but the painting of the swamp dragons and the excerpts from Leonard’s notebooks are great, too (“Clothing of the Empty Void: Mk 1.0 Rincewind. Converted pearl Diving Helmet with Simple Pressure Gauge (if eyeholes turn red, head has exploded).”). This is great stuff, though probably not for those new to Discworld. (Try Small Gods for that.)

[*] If you go to “Originals,” you can see a few more pictures from the book. I didn’t link straight to that page because it, like much of the rest of the site, has annoying and unnecessary Java applets. (And I won’t link to the site’s front page because the navigation options from that end are truly terrible.)

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Westlake, Donald E.: (10) Bad News

One of the best ways to unwind is with one of Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder books. I finished a nice leisurely re-read of Bad News a few days ago, but haven’t had time to update this since.

I don’t have much to add to what Chad said about it, so I’ll just leave you with part of one of my favorite scenes from the book. It’s Thanksgiving dinner, and the gang is trying to figure out what scam they’ve stumbled into.

Dortmunder said to J.C., “I don’t think we got enough information yet.” To Kelp, he said, “There’s another partner, right?”

“That’s what he says,” Kelp said, and to Anne Marie, he said, “This stuff is really great, hon, we oughta eat like this every night.”

“We do, Andy,” Anne Marie said.

J.C. said, “So maybe the other partner is what’ll tell you.”

Dortmunder said to Anne Marie, “Great gravy, really great gravy, goes with the turkey like they were meant for each other.” Then he said to J.C., “We’ll find out tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock.”

“Speaking of which,” Tiny said, “that’s a very tight schedule, Kelp.”

“I didn’t want to give them a chance to booby-trap us.”

“Tight for us.”

Dortmunder said, “No, I think Andy’s right. We’re not trying to blow them up, just talk to them. Doesn’t take that much preparation.”

“Maybe,” Tiny said, and patted Anne Marie, to his right, on the arm—she flinched—and said, “This is a great meal, Anne Marie. Every bit of it. I’m gonna be around for seconds.”

“Good,” Anne Marie said, smiling at him and favoring her other arm.

Kelp said, “It would be nice if we had a car with a remote control. And a bomb, you know? Send it out there, see what happens. If nothing happens, then we go out there with the other car.”

J.C. said, “You’re going to have to give me the recipe for these creamed onions, Anne Marie. Isn’t she, Tiny?”

“Yes,” Tiny said, and turned to Kelp to say, “Hand grenade and duct tape.”

Kelp looked at him. “You’d be willing to do that?”

“I done it before,” Tiny said. “It always makes people switch over to Plan B, every time.”

“Okay, good,” Kelp said. “You got the grenade?”

“I know where to get it.”

Dortmunder said, “I think I should find us some guns, too.”

“Okay,” Kelp said. “And in the morning, I’ll go steal us a car.”

“You know,” Anne Marie said, “Thanksgiving dinner conversation in Lancaster, Kansas, wasn’t at all like this.” And she smiled happily around at her guests.

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Tolkien, J.R.R.: (01) The Fellowship of the Ring (movie)

In some ways, this is an anti-book log entry, because I deliberately did not re-read The Fellowship of the Ring before going to see the movie. I wanted to be able to see the movie on its own terms, at least as much as I could given its nature as an adaptation. I think this was the right decision; I knew in a general way what the sequence of events was, but since the book’s precise chronology wasn’t fresh in my mind, the narrative tension seemed to be enhanced. And while I couldn’t, and can’t, help but to compare the two, I didn’t realize that a lot of things were done differently until after the movie was over; much less distracting.

I loved the movie; I was bouncing up and down with joy for hours afterwards, and wanted to see the next two immediately—never mind this post-production stuff, just give me the raw footage. (I intend to see it again, and very soon; I think that I’ll be able to enjoy it on its own terms even more now that the questions of what’s been changed, how are the actors, etc., have been answered. Besides, I’m told I missed a few details—and it’s just so much fun.) I think, too, that it’s as good an adaptation of the book (ah, now we get into the book, justifying this entry into the book log) as one could have hoped for.

First, the actors are all excellent. Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, and Viggo Mortensen are particularly wonderful realizations of the characters, but really, just about everybody fits beautifully. (The main exception, for me, was Liv Tyler as Arwen, but that may be because she was only on screen briefly, too briefly for me to sink into the character. Given my fears about Arwen Warrior Princess, I was pleased to not actually hate her, though, so overall I’m neutral on that.) Second, the look of the film is just astounding; the landscapes and buildings and scenery are all just as I’d imagined, or better (as I’m not so good on imagining landscapes). Third, much of the dialogue is lifted whole from the book and rendered wonderfully.

More generally, and perhaps more importantly, the good parts of the the movie enhance my vision of the book, both the parts I loved and even some of the things in the book that I liked less—presenting them in a way that turns them into assets (and perhaps even making them more akin to what Tolkien intended, but that class and time and nationality and gender got between his intention and my reading). The movie streamlines the oddly-paced opening; presents Sam in a much less annoying fashion, and integrates the hobbits’ comic relief extremely smoothly and deftly; deepens some of the characterizations with a few small additions and the great work of the actors; and modifies the breaking of the Fellowship just enough to give a different, and to me slightly more plausible, reading of some of the characters’ motivations. (I regret that the Council of Elrond had to be changed, as it’s one of my favorite parts of the book, but I can understand that it wouldn’t translate well onto the screen.)

Of the bits of the movie that I didn’t like—which are very few—they won’t ruin the book for me, as they were overly-literal renderings of a couple of scenes that I will simply continue to use my own imagination for when I next re-read. Another may be cast in a slightly different light by subsequent installments, so I shall defer judgment. The movie is, manifestly, not the book; but it is a wonderful complement to the book, and as good I as ever hoped.

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Peters, Ellis: (00) A Rare Benedictine

Ellis Peters’ A Rare Benedictine was published after the eighteenth Brother Cadfael novel, meaning I really should not have read it for a long time if I was sticking to strict publication order. However, it’s a collection set at various times before the first novel, so I figured it was okay to read it now. Plus, it’s short, which is a Good Thing during paper hell week. It includes the story of how Brother Cadfael joined the monastery, “A Light on the Road to Woodstock,” and two others, all fairly low-key and enjoyable.

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Bishop, Anne: Pillars of the World, The

On the train yesterday, I couldn’t do most of the work I brought with me because it required precise and steady handwriting, which one cannot have on a train, really. So I read Anne Bishop’s The Pillars of the World instead. This is a shrug book: I finished it and shrugged. Bishop’s first books, the Black Jewels trilogy, were pure guilty pleasures; deeply unsubtle and rather icky in places, but enjoyable all the way through. Pillars has the same flaws, but lacks the distinctive characters that overcame these problems in the Black Jewels books. (It also starts a series, which is not indicated anywhere on the book that I can see; it’s possible that it won’t be a tightly-linked series, however.)

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Peters, Ellis: (02) One Corpse Too Many

Finished the second Brother Cadfael novel, One Corpse Too Many, yesterday over lunch. This shifts focus from the monastery’s politics and concerns to the siege of Shrewsbury in the 12th-century civil war between Stephen and Maud. Most of the book focuses on the plight of characters associated with the murder victim; the murder itself is not terribly mysterious, but that’s okay because I really like the characters. Maybe I’m reacting more to these books than I usually would because I’m particularly stressed out, but so far they give me an overall impression of sheer benevolence, which is as good as a hot bath for relaxing me.

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Peters, Ellis: (01) A Morbid Taste for Bones

I solved the what-to-read problem by deciding that I didn’t feel like reading anything sf, not anything at all, and starting a mystery novel that I’d bought a while ago. A Morbid Taste for Bones, Ellis Peters’ first “Brother Cadfael” novel, was purchased because I vaguely thought I’d heard good things about the series, it was two dollars, and it was the first of the series, my preferred starting point.

I’m very pleased; I’ve discovered what bids fair to be another comfort series with lots of books (twenty-odd, I think) to look forward to. I quite like Cadfael (even if I’m not sure how to say his name), and those around him are painted clearly but compassionately in a way I find very soothing. The 12th-century setting feels familiar, from lots of medievaloid fantasies, yet has enough interesting details about life in a monastery, Welsh culture, and so forth to stay interesting. The mystery works out pretty well, too, not excessively convoluted or cutesy, though I’m slightly dubious about an underlying detail of the solution. Overall, I’m quite looking forward to spending more time with Brother Cadfael—and having just brought a stack of books home from the library, I shall probably be doing so soon.

Brother Cadfael himself found nothing strange in his wide-ranging career, and had forgotten nothing and regretted nothing. He saw no contradiction in the delight he had taken in battle and adventure, and the keen pleasure he now found in quietude. Spiced, to be truthful, with more than a little mischief when he could get it, as he liked his victuals well-flavoured, but quietude all the same, a ship becalmed and enjoying it. . . .

When you have done everything else, perfecting a convent herb-garden is a fine and satisfying thing to do.

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Pratchett, Terry: Carpet People, The; The Bromeliad

Having finished with The Fiery Cross, for the first time in a month I didn’t know what I was reading next—and what’s worse, couldn’t decide what I felt like reading. (This is about level on my annoyance scale with, oh, being hungry but not wanting to eat anything that you can reasonably get your hands on.) Fortuitously, the day after my last post, I got a package from a friend abroad with Terry Pratchett’s The Carpet People (plus a couple of other books, including the aptly-named It Came From Schenectady). Perfect.

The Carpet People is Pratchett’s first novel, sort of. That is, it was originally published when he was seventeen (seventeen! I didn’t even have my one and only letter to the editor published by the time I was seventeen), and then re-written and republished when he was forty-three, after Discworld hit it big in the U.K. (It’s never been released in the U.S.) As Pratchett puts it in his Author’s Note,

This book had two authors, and they were both the same person. . . . It’s not exactly the book I wrote then. It’s not exactly the book I’d write now. It’s a joint effort, but, heh heh, I don’t have to give him half the royalties. He’d only waste them.

The Carpet People is the story of two brothers who lead their tribe away from the devastation caused by Fray and find that the Empire itself is threatened. It’s recognizably Pratchett in the themes and some of the characters, but was an odd read all the same. I enjoyed it, but I couldn’t help but feel that I was paying more attention to the patches (or what I imagine are the patches) than the actual story. (It may also have been even less subtle than usual about its Messages for Pratchett, but I can’t be sure.) I wouldn’t recommend that any but the most die-hard Pratchett fans import it, certainly.

One of my distractions was actually caused by having read a later Pratchett, The Bromeliad (Truckers, Diggers, Wings), which I picked up for the relevant bit [1] and got sucked into re-reading. This turned out to be a good thing, because I like the Bromeliad very much, probably the best of Pratchett’s non-Discworld books.

The Bromeliad is also about very small people, though not as small—about four inches high. For generations, nomes have lived in the Store, thinking the Outside was just a myth; then some strange nomes arrive with a mysterious Thing that claims the Store will be demolished soon. The Thing turns out to be a computer, the nomes turn out to be aliens, and one of the most wonderful things in the world turns out to be frogs living their whole lives in epiphytic bromeliads.

I really like these; the serious bits are well-balanced by the humor of the nomes’ reaction to the larger world, and I just love turning the pretentious names of some fantasy series on their heads by calling the trilogy after a flower. But what am I going to read now?

[1] Does anyone really care what bit it was? Okay, here it is—we’re told early in the Bromeliad that nomes live faster because they’re smaller, so ten years is a lifetime to nomes. Well, if I hadn’t read that before, I wouldn’t have said to myself, “Okay, if a Carpet People city is that big >.<, then they must live really fast, and that would explain why the matches, penny, etc., haven’t been picked up yet. Except they seem to have day and night, and then the scale’s all wrong—” and then we’re off to the races trying to justify things that are a) just magic b) nothing that would have bothered me if I hadn’t thought of the Bromeliad . . . 

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Gabaldon, Diana: (105) The Fiery Cross (re-read)

Completed the re-read of The Fiery Cross that was interrupted by Thanksgiving break. This book’s structure clearly places it as the second-to-last book in the series, as do the themes it emphasizes.

Past books had structures that reflected their nature as natural divisions of a larger story. Outlander starts the story, covering the earliest part of Claire & Jamie’s marriage, and ending with their arrival in France. Dragonfly in Amber covers their time in France and elsewhere, trying—unsuccessfully—to prevent Culloden. It ends with their failure and separation. Voyager is what happened to them while they were separated, how they were reunited, and how they ended up in the New World. In Drums of Autumn, Claire and Jamie establish their life in America; the book ends with the resolution of part of Brianna and Roger’s story.

The Fiery Cross takes place from late 1770 to late 1772. It picks up, as the first section is titled, in medias res, the day after the end of Drums. However, one can’t really describe the story covered by this volume as a neat chunk, like prior books; instead, it’s clearly a prelude to the sixth and last book, which will cover the American Revolution.

The book also structured somewhat unusually for the series, which had previously employed both flashbacks and interweaving of timelines, but in a fairly even-paced way. Some points in time are still going to have more happen during them than others, but this book takes that toward one extreme. The first 160-odd pages all take place during the last day of the Gathering of area Scots, of which weddings are a particular focus. Then there’s a domestic interlude as the characters prepare to muster the militia to deal with the Regulators, North Carolinans disaffected with corrupt British officials, and then adventures during the muster. Another domestic interlude, and then another 150-odd pages on another wedding-focused gathering (note the recurring bench and glasses, and some dialogue parallels) and then back to the Regulators again. The structure loosens up a bit after that; more domestic interludes on the aftermath of the Regulators, and then another crisis, and then after that, bits and pieces from the prior gatherings jump back up and get (partly) dealt with. The book then ends with some new time-travel information and the characters looking ahead to the coming Revolution.

Whew. You see why it’s almost a thousand pages.

This structure makes sense; after all, Claire and Jamie are living on a remote mountain, and there is just naturally more scope for plot when there are more people around, as during the gatherings. And it also displays the general themes the series is exploring: marriage, and the changes in society during the 18th century. It just felt a bit odd on the first time through.

At first, I thought the book ended too abruptly. Upon reflection, I think it doesn’t, but on a theme level rather than a plot one. Without getting into spoilers, Claire and Jamie are certainly having to face their own mortality these days (Jamie turns fifty in this book, and Claire is several years older). Time and change and the (im)mutability of history—those are all themes that, as played out in events towards the end of the book, are likely to sharpen that realization. And since Gabaldon has said that she thinks the story is going to end around 1800, when Jamie would be approaching 80 . . . well, I rather suspect that we’re going to see all of Claire and Jamie’s lives from the point they met.

Some thoughts on the rest of the book: I think the other viewpoint characters continue to be developed in ways that I find very interesting and realistic. The story is also still very engrossing; there’s one sequence that pulled me in far enough that I could just feel my skin crawling. (There’s also bits that had me snickering, like Claire’s first use of her microscope.) However, there’s another sequence late in the book that bothers me, because I can’t believe Jamie would be quite that stupid in that manner. This might reflect what I suspect was a fairly hasty editing process. And one last minor annoyance: I had “Clementine,” which is a terrible song (here’s one set of lyrics, though the book doesn’t use the “dreadful sorry” line, thankfully), stuck in my head for days.

Overall verdict: worth both the lengthy wait and the loss of sleep. If I’m still doing this book log in four years or so, y’all can see me get twitchy all over again waiting for book six . . .

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